Heerlen 5 ‘Living Together in Cities’ – reports

From 8-10 December the Heerlen Group organised its 5nd annual meeting in Paris. Over 50 Greens from 9 countries spent two days getting to know each other, appreciating diffenences and finding what they have in common on issues like migration, multicultural cities, greening food policies and democracy within the European Green Party. Here are the reports.

1. Living together in Cities: Still Our Challenge

• Setting fire to buses might be seen as a proof of integration. But in the end even the most broad-minded Greens have to come up with more sustainable ways to create societies which all recognise as theirs. Read the first report of the Heerlen meeting in Paris and join the debate.
• Full report

2. Migration, our challenge: Without migrants, life would be boring!

• Brain gain, economic development and more interesting societies: for the participants of Heerlen 5 in Paris migration is a positive thing – and the freedom to move and settle a fundamental right. But how to prevent that some profit more from it than others? The answers to this tricky question varied from ‘exporting our best social systems’ to ‘admitting only those we need’.
• Full report

3. Our Europe: ’5000 Euro for the first European party!’

• Five thousand Euros for the first European party that accepts me as a member, promised the Swiss Italian Hubert Frasnelli. Other proposals of this concluding meeting of the Paris conference were: an online European membership application form and international lists for all green parties participating in the European elections of 2009.
• Full report
• Statement Markuz Petz

4. Food -’A lever to change policies’

• One can split hairs about whether organic is better than seasonal, fair trade or locally produced. But what counts in the end are the facts. Partly thanks to Greens present at this meeting, 150 thousand Paris children get organic school lunches every day, 350 French community groups buy their food from local farms and 80 thousand London construction workers will have a healthy diet when building the venues of the 2012 Olympic Games.
• Full report